I proved immortality with thunder magic.

Yuanfu Peak, a small courtyard in the valley.

"Yuanbao, come here and lie down properly. No matter what happens later, don't resist, understand?"

In the courtyard, Zhou Tai spread a piece of spiritual paper with mysterious runes on the ground and waved to the Thunder-Patterned Frog lying by the pond.

Today, he is finally ready to officially adopt this Thunder-Patterned Frog, which has the appearance of a frog king, as his first spirit pet.

This frog already has its own name, "Yuanbao," inspired by a cat that Zhou Tai raised in his previous life.

To this end, he even went to the library to learn the methods of contracting spirit pets, which took him a lot of time to study.

As a sect renowned for its beast taming, Spirit Beast Mountain possesses various methods for forming contracts with spirit pets.

Some particularly ferocious monsters, in order to prevent them from turning against their masters, will even use various different methods to enslave them through contracts.

However, Zhou Tai was not worried that the Thunder Frog would turn against him, so he only learned the common "Master-Servant Blood Pact".

This contract is based on the human as the master and the beast as the servant. For the contract to be valid, the beast must accept it completely voluntarily. It is generally only applicable to young beasts that do not yet have their own consciousness, or to beast eggs.

From this perspective, the Thunder-patterned Frog Yuanbao does not actually meet the requirements, because it is at least five or six years old.

But Zhou Tai felt that it probably wouldn't refuse.

In some ways, he was like Yuanbao the Thunder Frog's father, raising it from a young age, giving it special treatment, and helping it escape its fate of being skinned and eaten.

As it turned out, his intuition was correct.

At his call, the Thunder-Patterned Frog Yuanbao quickly and obediently jumped onto the spirit paper and lay down.

When he cut his own wrist and used his blood as a medium to chant incantations and form hand seals to activate the talismans on the paper, the Thunder-Patterned Frog Yuanbao did not have any intention of moving or resisting at all. He obediently allowed the incantation and talisman culture to form a blood net around his body and gradually integrate into his body.

quack!

Only after the entire contract ceremony was completed did the Thunder-Patterned Frog Yuanbao let out a croak.

Because the contract had been completed, Zhou Tai was able to clearly understand the meaning behind the frog's croak through the special telepathic connection built by the master-servant blood pact.

That meant he was asking if he could move now.

This feeling of being able to understand the meaning of frog calls was quite novel to Zhou Tai.

He paused for a moment, then smiled and patted the frog's head, saying, "Yuanbao is such a good boy. Go back to the pond and play. I'll give you an extra treat tomorrow!"

Similarly, after the contract was completed, the Thunder-Patterned Frog Yuanbao was able to understand Zhou Tai's words more clearly. After listening, it happily rubbed against his palm and then obediently jumped back into the pond.

Watching the frogs swimming freely in the pond, and recalling the wondrous feeling of understanding their language, Zhou Tai couldn't help but exclaim, "Cultivating immortality truly changes one's perception!"

Compared to manually conjuring lightning and flames, this change in mental consciousness is actually more awe-inspiring.

Zhou Tai had previously read in ancient texts that once a demon beast reaches the fifth level, as long as it is willing and dares to take risks, it can trigger the so-called "transformation lightning tribulation." If it passes the tribulation, it can transform into a human and even reproduce with humans!

He was very skeptical of this claim at the time, because it completely overturned his understanding from his previous life.

But now that he, a Qi Refining stage cultivator, can understand frog language through a contractual restriction, it's hard for him not to believe in the stories of human transformation in the ancient texts.

However, a fifth-tier demonic beast corresponds to a Nascent Soul stage cultivator of the human race. Such a powerful cultivator has never appeared in the thousands of years of history of Spirit Beast Mountain. No matter how confident Zhou Tai is, he dares not say whether he will have the opportunity to meet such an existence in his lifetime, so he has no way to verify its authenticity.

After acquiring the Thunder-Patterned Frog Gold Ingot, Zhou Tai had accomplished a small task that weighed on his mind, and he could now focus some of his attention on improving his combat experience.

Two months have passed since Aaron Kwok left, and Zhou Tai has not dared to forget his parting words.

However, doing this well is not so easy.

First, it's hard to find sparring partners. Second, Zhou Tai hasn't learned any spells other than a few offensive spells, and he doesn't have a single combat-related magical artifact.

Magical artifacts are easy to buy; as long as you're willing to spend spirit stones, you can just buy them.

Learning magic is a big problem.

His schedule is packed every day now. If he were to squeeze out a lot of time to learn magic, it would definitely interfere with making money.

Therefore, after careful consideration, Zhou Tai decided that he would only learn lightning-attribute spells from now on, and use spirit stones to buy spell talismans to replace other attribute spells.

Although the power of a spell is usually not as great as that of the original spell, it is not much different, and it does not consume much of one's own mana.

Now, his next task is to find someone to spar with.

So Zhou Tai began searching for talisman masters he knew on Yuanfu Peak to learn more about the situation.

"Junior Brother Zhou wants to find someone to spar with and improve his combat experience? That's easy! Just go to the Bounty Hall under the General Affairs Department and post a bounty. Plenty of menial disciples and outer disciples will be willing to be your sparring partners!"

After listening to Zhou Tai's question, an experienced talisman master quickly provided the optimal solution.

This is exactly the answer Zhou Tai likes best!

In his view, anything that could be solved with spirit stones was the simplest thing.

Now that this problem has been solved, he only needs to do one thing: draw more talismans to earn spirit stones!

So, in the time that followed, Zhou Tai focused on drawing thunder talismans, aside from his tasks at the Talisman Hall.

After he obtained the Thunder Brush, his success rate in drawing thunder talismans indeed improved, and now he can achieve a 20% success rate in most cases.

This resulted in astonishingly high profits.

The best part is that the battle in the Demon Abyss Mountains is fierce right now, and the lightning talismans targeting demon cultivators are already in short supply. Even with the price increase, many people are willing to grit their teeth and buy them.

Zhou Tai doesn't even need to advertise; every month, many people who have heard that he can draw thunder talismans will come to his door to place orders. He can just lie at home and collect money.

This made him very proud of his initial choice; his judgment was indeed as good as ever.

That day, when Zhou Tai was checking the mailbox outside the door, he suddenly found a letter that surprised him.

After reading the contents of the letter, he pondered for a moment and then used the communication talisman that was attached to the letter.

He then returned home to brew tea and wait for his guests to arrive.

After waiting for about half an hour, the sound of wind chimes rang out from outside the courtyard, reminding the owner that someone was knocking on the door.

Zhou Tai immediately went out and opened the courtyard gate.

Outside the gate, a sweet-looking girl in a yellow dress stood quietly waiting.

Upon seeing him emerge from behind the door, the girl in yellow first gave him a curious once-over before smiling sweetly and saying, "Hello, Uncle Zhou! You should still remember me, right?"

Hearing her slightly intimate way of addressing him, Zhou Tai frowned imperceptibly for a moment, then said calmly, "Junior Sister Hu, please call me Senior Brother Zhou. I have prepared tea; please follow me."

After saying that, he turned and walked into the courtyard, not caring whether the girl would follow.

To be honest, Zhou Tai never expected that Hu Qianqian, the girl with three spiritual roots who came to Spirit Beast Mountain with him, would suddenly come knocking on his door after sixteen years.

He had no idea how the other party knew he lived here.

Just as he was pondering these things, Hu Qianqian, the girl in yellow who had followed him into the courtyard, suddenly turned her eyes to the pond in the courtyard, and her gaze met a pair of big frog eyes.

She looked at the giant blue frog floating in the water, blinked, and then exclaimed with delight, "Wow, what an adorable frog! Uncle Zhou, do you still have a spirit pet?"

"I'm just keeping it as a pet for fun. And stop calling me 'uncle' or I'll have to ask you to leave."

Zhou Tai turned his head and looked at the girl in yellow quietly, but his tone was cold.

He was now certain that the girl in yellow was not simply visiting a fellow villager; otherwise, she would never have gone to such lengths to build a closer relationship with him.

You should know that even before the two of them went up the mountain, he had only met the girl in yellow from his childhood once or twice. At most, they knew each other, but they were not familiar with each other at all.

Sensing the change in his attitude, the girl in yellow, Hu Qianqian, changed her expression slightly before obediently nodding and replying, "Yes, Senior Brother Zhou, Junior Sister understands."

She dared not mention the spirit pet again, and after giving the Thunder-Patterned Frog Yuanbao a reluctant look, she followed Zhou Tai into the living room of the main building.